"After reading Monday’s front page story ("Golden retriever proposed as official ‘state domestic animal,’" Nov. 17)..."

"... telling of the harmless, well-intentioned efforts of children to determine an animal deemed worthy by Sen. Aaron Osmond and his cohorts to be Utah’s 'state domestic animal'... I am truly bewildered by the placement, column inches and content of the story, but who am I to judge what should appear on the front page of a major city’s daily newspaper?... I do hope the children being taught by Ms. Meyer are able to learn from their efforts to affect the actions of the state’s lawmakers. Keeping the state Legislature busy with such matters seems far better than letting them have time to carry out their usual lunacy. If the children involved actually learn how those governing this state operate, their quest will be eye-opening but ultimately disappointing and maddening. May I suggest an animal that represents this state far better than any dog or cat. The domestic creature most emblematic of the residents of this state is the sheep."

Letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune by John K. Dallimore of Cottonwood Heights.

Ms. Meyer = Daybreak Elementary School teacher Alli Meyer, who led her 4th grade class in " just really a fun project to partner with these kids to teach them about the legislative process." Her class got the idea to influence a state senator to propose a state domestic animal after seeing that some other Utah students had successfully influenced the legislature to change the state tree from Colorado blue spruce to quaking aspen. Those students had made the persuasive political argument that a tree with "Colorado" in its name should not be the state tree of Utah. I don't know the extent to which they considered fact that "Aspen" is a city in Colorado.

"We wondered if we could do something similar. We thought of replacing the California seagull as the state bird, but didn’t think that would happen since the seagulls helped save the pioneers from crickets," Meyer said. "We noticed we didn’t have a state domestic animal," as Wisconsin does (the dairy cow). She said the students decided to pursue that. (Utah already has an official "state animal," the Rocky Mountain elk.)

10 thoughts:

1. Thanks for emulating Wisconsin, but the significance of golden retrievers to Utah scarecely parallels the significance of cows to America's dairyland.

2. It's hard to oppose dog lovers... dog lovers and 4th graders... but that's how politics works, right? What a lesson! Patch together bits of sentiment and make it harder to say no than yes.

3. What's up with picking a particular breed? It's not like Wisconsin picked the Holstein as its state domestic animal, and we have the experience of seeing those iconic black-and-white cows dotted all over the rolling green farmland. If I had photoshop skills, I'd produce an image of golden retrievers in a comparable pattern on a stark desert landscape.

4. Okay, what's the story of the crickets and the seagulls? Here's the Wikipedia entry for "Miracle of the gulls":

Although late frosts in April and May destroyed some of the crops, the pioneers seemed to be well on their way to self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, swarms of insects appeared in late May.... According to traditional accounts, legions of gulls appeared by June 9, 1848. It is said that these birds, native to the Great Salt Lake, ate mass quantities of crickets, drank some water, regurgitated, and continued eating more crickets over a two-week period. The pioneers saw the gulls' arrival as a miracle, and the story was recounted from the pulpit by church leaders such as Orson Pratt and George A. Smith (Pratt 1880, p. 275; Smith 1869, p. 83). The traditional story is that the seagulls annihilated the insects, ensuring the survival of some 4,000 Mormon pioneers who had traveled to Utah. For this reason, Seagull Monument was erected and the California gull is the state bird of Utah.

5. So "California" was in the name of the state bird, which made it look like a sitting duck of a Colorado blue spruce variety. But the children learned that the seagull had a monumental role in the history of Utah.


Credit: Intothewoods29

6. Of course, the cricket — not that they were crickets (they were some kind of katydid) — can't be the state insect of Utah. The state insect had to be the bee... as a 5th-grade class back lobbied the legislature to acknowledge: "The honey bee is significant in Utah history, as Utah was first called by its Mormon settlers, 'The Provisional State of Deseret,' a Book of Mormon word meaning honey bee."

7. Can we get an Establishment Clause lawsuit over the honey bee's status as state insect?

8. Would that there were somewhere a Provisional State of Golden Retriever!

9.  Have you heard of golden retriever politics? Neither have I. Golden retriever don't have politics.... they're very gentle... all compassion.... all compromise. We can trust the golden retriever. I'd like to become the first golden retriever politician. I'd like to, but.... I'm a golden retriever... who dreamed she was a woman, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the golden retriever is taking another nap.

10. What happens when a golden retriever goes on "Meet the Press"? 

What if I forget my talking points? These journalists can be ruthless... hard-hitting... always looking for sound-bites, gaffes, gotcha moments.... What? My position? (Uh oh, here it comes) On what? — my position on CATS ??? Uh... well, cats are... uh, cats are...